To address this, we really focused on building relationships with students in those first weeks. That’s always important because every student learns best within the context of a safe, supportive relationship. The SEL efforts involved everyone at the school. While the teacher had 20 kids in front of them in every class, my whole team, from myself and my assistant principal to instructional coaches and the folks in charge of wraparound services, worked to support individual students as well as the teachers, who were in turn building those connections with kids.
Math was also a particular area of focus for us. We had a couple of big wins on that front heading into the pandemic, but we still weren’t quite where we were trying to get, so we were worried about the progress lost there as well. To communicate our urgency around math through consistent practice, we asked all our teachers to start their math classes with 20 minutes of ST Math time.
English and language arts are always a focus as well, just because literacy is so fundamental to a student’s broader learning. Our ELA teachers have a read-aloud every morning not just to communicate our sense of urgency with regard to literacy, but to help reinforce those relationships and the community we’re building with shared experiences and daily routines.
We set targets to reach for literacy and math at every grade level, and we worked hard to meet them. We didn’t always get everything we wanted, but by shooting for excellence, we got a lot closer to it than if we never tried. Right now, growth is what’s most important, not whether we can reach some data point.
3. Focus on professional learning and support.
I think we did a good job of inspiring a general sense of urgency without causing a lot of unnecessary anxiety, but we still had to focus some of that urgency on specific areas. It’s just not possible to feel urgent about 30 different things and give them all their due energy.
For us, the area we thought would offer the greatest return on our investment was delivery of instruction. We emphasized our professional learning communities, which comprise teachers across each grade and an instructional coach. Our administrative team continued twice-weekly classroom visits to identify effective practices to share, or to provide support for teachers who needed it.
We also have instructional leadership meetings first thing in the morning twice a month. This creates a rich environment of constant communication and collaboration. Any teacher in this school will tell you that if you have a question, five or six educators are going to give you answers or suggestions before you’re done asking.
For our school, everything came together and lined up when we talked about urgency. It just became clear what we had to do. But urgency is not about driving teachers or learners with fear or anxiety. It’s about focusing on what’s important and keeping it centered through community, collaboration, and communication.
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